The Enemy of my Enemy
by PuzzleRaven
Summary: When Doctor Mother gets an offer to destroy Scion, it seems exactly what Cauldron needs. But strange alliances can be formed under pressure, and the enemy of your enemy need not be your friend.
1. The Enemy of my Enemy

**The Enemy of my Enemy**

"Doctor," it was a man's voice was dry, inhuman, and slightly echoing. "I require communication with you." At her desk, the Doctor did not even look up from her tablet as she worked.

"Custodian, return the patient to the cell." She continued to type, but there was no whisper of air, no response.

"I did not come from your cells." She looked up. The green-skinned man wasn't a Case 53, she would remember him. Nor did he match her recollection of the vial capes. "Your scientific method has been noted." He sounded faintly approving.

"Who are you?"

"The identifier is irrelevant in your planet's language." That caught her attention. The highest chance was a deranged Thinker or Tinker, with the technology that wrapped his body, but he might be telling the truth. An alien ally would be invaluable.

"What do you want?"

"My goal is to preserve your species. I have encountered an obstacle."He turned a hand palm up, rotating more smoothly than a human could. An image appeared, less than a foot high but perfectly formed, exactly life-like. The golden man rotated in the air as she watched. "Identify this entity."

"Scion."

"It is not beneficial." The voice was distracted, factual. "It and its kind are parasites. They have destroyed many races. A massive waste of resources and knowledge."

"We know."

"I do not intend for it to destroy this one." The Doctor frowned at him, absently brushing grey dust from her desk. It must have blown in when he entered.

"We already have plans under way to stop him."

"You have no confidence in them." The man made no move to sit, but somehow she felt that she was the subordinate, being looked down upon. "I can destroy the creature. If you assist, you will never need to fear the Entities in the future."

"If you can destroy Scion, why do you need us?"

"These parasites travel in pairs. I have been unable to locate its partner. Attacking without knowing the second Entity's location is unwise." Now, that she could understand. She raised an eyebrow and told half a lie.

"Scion has never had a partner."

"Then I cannot help you," the green-skinned man said dispassionately, as he stood up. "An unexpected attack would consume too many resources. I shall return once you have defeated him."

"Wait." The Doctor said, as the portal formed in front of him. She dismissed the idea of calling Contessa. This was their best chance to defeat Scion. She could not just let the creature walk away. "We killed its partner."

"At your current level of technological understanding, that is unlikely." The disbelief in the cool tones was unmistakeable. "There is a high probability you lie to gain my alliance."

"I killed it myself." She said, as coolly. "Its remains were used to create weapons against the entity."

"Innovative," he said, with definite interest, and she relaxed as the portal closed. "A claim you will prove."

"If you wish to see the weapons."

"The human hybridisation program is of little interest. A live entity could be the subject as easily."

"I can show you the body." She stood up. "Door to the garden." One wall of the room disappeared, replaced with a floor-to-ceiling wall with another door in it. She pulled the key from her desk, all business. "Follow me."

"I will use my own transport. Permitting detection by an entity is unacceptable." It was an understandable security precaution. She stepped through the door, looking back. Her visitor's body disassembled itself into grid-lines, re-assembling itself on the other side beside her.

As the Door closed, she thought she saw a trickle of grey powder as fine as talc drifting into the air above her desk, driven as if by an invisible breeze to split into fine tendrils. Custodian about her clean-up duties. She unlocked the door and led him out onto the gantry overlooking the garden.

They stopped at the start of the stairs down into it, overlooking the vast garden of limbs and fractals, stretching back into the darkness. His head turned slowly as she let him survey it, feeling understandable pride.

"Is this proof?"

"Adequate." He smiled thinly. "Acquisition commencing." Before she could protest, light beams sliced through the roof, carving through the concrete effortlessly. Beams like lasers flickered over the garden, breaking it down into grid-lines that flowed back up the beams through the holes burned into the thick concrete. As she raised her hand to her communicator, turned to run, the roof fell.

#

Alexandria finished the second report on integrating Case 53's with the Protectorate. She was late, but as no Door had opened, she was taking extra time on certain case studies. Weld, particularly, was promising. Another like him could only assist PR. A partnership with another Case 53 would be ideal. With his charisma he might even make a mass-murderer like Garotte acceptable. Her tablet flickered and she frowned, tapping it. Tinker-tech shouldn't do this. It went blank. She frowned, pressing the screen to debug. Waves of gibberish filled it, waves she recognised as binary. A connection. A download. A breach.

"Door to the Doctor, now." The wall became an opening and she was through it, into a scene of utter devastation. The basement of the ruined building had been opened to the distant sky far above, where too-familiar but eeriely different stars shone. In the ruins, a dark-skinned leg was visible ending in a scarlet splash under the tons of concrete. There was no foot, and under the concrete when she lifted it, there was nothing that could be called a body.

Even with her thinker powers it took time to place the reality from the stars, the building from the markings on the rubble, and to realise what wasn't here. She activated built-in comms in her helmet. With the garden gone, it was too late to care about security.

"Legend, the base is destroyed. The other creature's gone." His response came in a terror that matched her own.

"We've got bigger-" The transmission cut.

#

New York had frozen. On the streets, people stared upwards. Legend, ahead of the fliers, hung in the sky beneath the dome of blue light that enclosed the city. Light rays flashed down with inhuman precision, striking individual targets, people, animals, capes. Everything struck disappeared in a flow of green data towards the source of the beams, a steady conversion cascading into the tendrils as the light-rays acquired their targets. At the edges of the dome, the city became grid-lines as it was scanned and rescanned, erased as data flowed ever upwards.

Above it all, the vast three-eyed, skull-shaped vessel floated silently onwards, throwing earth into eclipse beneath it.


	2. is not my friend

**...is not my friend**

The Warrior notes interference with the cycle. The intrusion is not a recognised host species, deploying power levels similar to a juvenile of its own species. The Warrior's request the intruder identify itself receives no response. Significant damage is detected, both to the physical form of the planet and being sustained by the host species in locations where the intrusion is occurring, centred on a mechanical construct holding in-atmosphere orbit above a site of high density occupation. In all other high-density host habitations, mechanical constructs have deployed, herding hosts and non-hosts together for assessment and slaughter.

The damage to the cycle is significant. The hosts' attempt to repel the invasion is failing. Data is being gathered at exceptional speed, but the hosts are being removed, breaking connection to the shards. Too many hosts absent from the cycle will collapse it.

The Warrior engages. Precise stilling beams destroy the constructs around the hosts, relocating to another city and repeating the process within a nanosecond, and another and another. Data assessment provides disquieting results. In the first city, the constructs have reformed. Reformation begins immediately the stilling effect ceases to be directly applied.

Destroying the constructs is ineffective. The entity relocates to the intruding vessel. Hosts surround the intruder, engaged in combat. A shield renders them ineffective, draining power from their attacks and turning it against the wielders. An effective defence.

Traces of something akin to its own kind are detected. Could it have been fortunate? Another entity who has somehow not perceived the markers the paired entities had left on their journey to show the system was claimed? A new chance to save the cycle? It signals greeting. The shield absorbs the message, breaks it down for data.

The Avatar steps into another world where the ship is not. The shield is still present. Ignoring the gasps of the untouched hosts here, it signals again, countless abilities refocused to scan. The shield locks on, draining energy as the shards meet it. The entity drops the connection, but it clings, pulling power from its exposed contact points. A consumption process, recalled from the early days of its species. The intruder is identified as hostile. The Warrior steps its Avatar into worlds upon worlds, where the ship is not. The shield is there. In each earth the Avatar manifests, the shield blocks anything incoming. An enemy familiar with cross-dimensional combat.

This is not a significant problem. The issue has been encountered before, and though the hosts and world will die, so will the intruder. The signal is sent to draw others of their kind, to alert them to a threat. A swarm of entities will be sufficient to defeat this.

The signal is blocked. At the border of the solar system the Warrior detects a barrier, like that round the intruder, energy absorbing, across the dimensions it can access. Even around the one that contains the Warrior's true form. Resending shows it clearly: the signal is captured, analysed for information. Another Thinker?

The shield weakens. Stilling sears the surface of the intruding vessel, blinks out as the Warrior detects the presence of another Entity. Myriad powers act to assess the intruder, poised to consume its substance to prolong the cycle if the new entity cannot be forced to take its counterpart's role.

The shield finally wavers. The Warrior's scan pierces the intruder's armour, ignoring irrelevant matter as it scans for the core of the upstart entity. It finds it. The ready attack blinks out, stopped by an impulse faster than reflex.

The Thinker.

Part-fractal, part-data, not truly energy or matter. Is this the resolution of the cycle? Has its partner truly resolved the age-old problem at the cost of its communications shards? Curious, elated, it reaches out, signals the other entity.

The face of the Thinker animates, opens its eyes, looks at the Warrior.

As the data-gathering beams reach for it, the Warrior sends a query again. Ignored, unanswered, it trusts the other and permits the contact. It feels the Avatar beginning to dissolve, a drain that begins to break the Avatar down into data, draining energy from its true self. Detecting danger in the unknown and inefficient matter data conversion, it struggles, sending a query and cessation request to the Thinker. There is no response. The other holds the connection open, draining the entity's energy at the cost of its own shield.

Light blazes. Matter Eraser, thrown by the Thinker's OS shard, lashes through armour, burns into the ship and the Thinker's sculpted body. Even as the Warrior formulates an attack to destroy the erring host, one of its many skills detects the mechanism, observes the nanites infesting the Thinker, puppeting it. Countless powers focus to reveal the truth: the Thinker is brain-dead. Torn apart by mechanical means, slowly converting to data by a parasite that infests it completely. Beyond recovery. The shield slams shut.

The Warrior's avatar hangs in the air, weapons forgotten. It had not thought this possible. At some point, some time, while it worked with the hosts, the intruder had slain the Thinker. The cycle is over. It is truly alone.

Thought is frozen. Calculations are incomplete, unresolvable. In the simulated human mind it thinks with, a flicker of something that is not thought wakes. Its own processes frozen, the entity follows this new thread as if some small functioning part of it can guide the universe back to reason. Comparison against acquired knowledge indicates this is disbelief, the rejection of material fact. As the data gathering beams refocus, targeting the Avatar, it is still trying to calculate how this impossibility could have happened.

The shield blurs, translucent. The Thinker's body stirs. Nanites have rebuilt the head as the Enemy deliberately lets the entity detect it. Articulated mechanical arms reach down, slicing into the flesh and fractal form the Thinker should have worn. A signal is sent using the hijacked connections of the corpse, a mockery of the familiar, indicating the Warrior will share this fate. Fighting is pointless. The Warrior stares, frozen. Another flicker in the simulated mind is seized on for any direction, identified, concurred with, and acted upon.

RAGE

Heedless of energy spent it lashes out. The planned strategy of attacks breaks up into golden beams, darting between dimensions, striking wildly from this place and others. It wants this thing to not exist.

The connection remains, filaments reaching through the Avatar to drain the true body. The Warrior does not hesitate. The Avatar is terminated, detonated into a virus of data that cascades back down the connection. A new body is created in its place at a safer distance, for an undesirable loss of energy.

The Enemy reels.

FURY

The Warrior assesses the Enemy, the parasite that would destroy what is left of the cycle. Already it has begun to drain energy from the shards linked to captive hosts. The Warrior strikes back, but the creature evades. Parts of the parasite are in another plane. It can find no way to strike them. It still wears the Thinker's face, in deliberate mockery. Further incoming conversion constructs are detected, the Warrior forced to retreat as the path shows no other evasion.

Its fight is ineffective. The shield will not fall, gathering the power of the strikes and returning them to source. This energy expenditure is pointless.

The geographic habitation below has been reduced to nothing. The Enemy moves on, along the boundaries between water and land, towards the next nearest habitation centre. At the current rate of attrition, too many hosts will be lost for the cycle to continue.

COMPREHENSION

The value of activities presumed valueless over the passed orbital cycles is identified. A message. How to preserve the cycle. Calculation finds necessary requirements have been fulfilled in the energy already expended in low-energy rescue activity. Probability indicates that the host designated Kevin Norten may have had specific awareness of this threat, though the Warrior's inefficiency has denied it further access to information with the cessation of that being. An unnecessary regret. It has acquired sufficient data.

SIMULATION

Known breaking strain of the hosts. Survivable transport methods. Efficient energy allocation planned. Data-structured matter conversion. Restoration of life processes. A shard is repurposed and dedicated to this process for the most efficient response.

Portals appear in front of each attack launched from the hosts, exiting at the strategically most efficient points around the shield. Taken unprepared, the Enemy cannot match the energy expenditure. The shield drops, exposing armour as hard as a star to space. The Entity slices through it, seeking the data buffers that hold the re-rendered city in suspension.

RECOVERY

The city is reconverted to data, retrieved from the ship as the Enemy defends itself from the enraged hosts. The data is passed to the repurposed shard, assessed, and restored. The Enemy has used a clumsy conversion, energy inefficient as it saves unneeded levels of detail. This makes the shard's task simpler.

Physical buildings are recreated from the pattern within. The host species are removed from imprisonment, returned to their positions on the planet. Data-matter conversion is as simple as energy to structured matter and the reverse, a variant of the shard designated Ashbeast. Shaper deploys to recreate the bio-structures and restore life processes.

As it detects the shield raising, the Warrior employs its own Matter Eraser for one last precise strike. The Thinker is no more. The Enemy snarls in raw fury, raises its powers.

SATISFACTION

Battle is joined.

Portals deploy energies from the hearts of worlds where the sun went nova in pinpoint cascade across the shield. Esoteric powers shunt the vessel into different parts of time, breaking it across years. The Enemy is not helpless. The Warrior loses connection to its Avatar, notes that when it returns eternal seconds have passed. Energy is expended to restore it. A grey shield over the restored city freezes the Enemy's constructs as they try to form, cycling into existence and out. The Enemy will have to blast through its own to proceed. A vindictive blast of data from the Enemy, of the absolute knowledge of the universe's end is ignored. The Warrior already knows this. The fusion blast that occurs within its Avatar destroys it, but the additional energy is captured, reshaped into the form's immediate replacement.

The hosts join him, launching their own attacks. Tinker-tech missiles fail to hit the armour as the portals they traverse are forced to open outside the shield. Bioviruses eat away at the surface, keeping a low steady drain on the Enemy. Should they get through, the organic components of the ship will be dust instantly. A host on the ground raises a weapon, obsolete, fires at a construct. The Warrior identifies the energy as the projectile flies, opens a portal to the shield. The primitive projectile passes through the shield, the hull, the head of a green-skinned Avatar like its own, briefly detected and annihilated by the stilling ray that follows. The Enemy reforms.

The Enemy lifts its vessel away, clear of atmosphere. The Warrior pursues, the hosts falling back as the shards reached the power limits confining them to earth's orbit. Conflict Sentinel 3 relocates to the other side of the orbital body. The Enemy is repelled, not destroyed. Data Conversion rays extend towards the planet. The Warrior severs them. It is a stand-off.

The great skull ship hangs in the sky, orbiting beyond the hosts' reach, close enough that it twins the moon.

This is not another of its own on a separate evolutionary path. This is other, a species progressed enough to be a threat to the cycle. The Enemy gathers promising species, prevents the entities from completing their goal. Useful elements and energy removed from the entities' experiment.

With the Thinker dead, the cycle is broken. The path to restore it requires the attraction of new Entities, impossible while the Enemy exists. The alternative solution would be the refashioning of a shard to form a new core. The Warrior has sufficient energy to grow a replacement, but duration and vulnerability prohibits it while the Enemy exists.

It cannot travel on to a new system. The Enemy is draining too much power. When planets are destroyed for data, the Warrior cannot harvest them for energy.

HATRED

The Enemy believes the Warrior is alone, unable to call its own kind. It is correct. It believes none of its own will arrive by chance. Simulation shows it is correct. It believes it can outwait the Warrior, endure the shortened lifespan of two thousand and thirty-six orbital rotations remaining, as the Warrior has no weapons. It is incorrect.

The damage to the cycle from involving the hosts is incalcuably less than that of allowing the Enemy to continue existence.

DECISION

It simulates the host's communication methods, looking for a way to exchange meaning with the lower lifeforms. The Avatar's mouth opens. Atmosphere oscillates in front of it to create frequencies for a query detectable by the hovering hosts.

_"Alliance?"_


	3. but they're someone you can work with

**...but they might be someone you can work with**

Alexandria closed the door to her office the second she was alone with the restored Legend.

"What happened?" she demanded.

"I don't know." He pulled his mask off, scraping sweat-soaked hair from his forehead. "One second I was fighting it as the city vanished and then I was back in the sky and the ship was gone. Scion must've done something, but I have no idea what."

"Have you been contacted by Cauldron?"

"No." He sat down at her desk as she walked round to her own side. They didn't have long before they would have to be back in the field.

"We need to plan." She kept it short. "There are nests of constructs across the world which need to be eradicated. The attacker itself has retreated to outside Lunar orbit and is temporarily outside -" The wall of Alexandria's office opened to what could only be a Kansas skyline, and a man in a suit at a table. He looked far too composed for the situation. Legend half-rose as Alexandria let out a quiet breath.

"How did you get out?" she asked, as Number Man sipped a glass of water. The normally immaculately dressed accountant looked rumpled.

"When the equations for the future in the base summed to zero I Doored out, with Doormaker and Clairvoyant," he said, and Alexandria hid her relief. With the portal maker and the observer still alive they still had a chance. "Doctor Mother?" he asked.

"Dead," Alexandria replied, "and we're locked out of the systems."

"Consider anything linked to Cauldron's systems compromised." He steepled his fingers, "and do not allow it anywhere on your site. The Intruder may track it."

"Unlikely." Alexandria said. "Right after our new ally asked for an alliance, it wiped out anything technical the skullship had accessed. Tinkertech seems to be the only thing working that isn't compromised." The Number Man actually looked shocked.

"Dragon?" He picked up a pen, staring at nothing as he planned.

"Gone." Without Dragon, the fate of those in the Birdcage was unknown. "We can try to contact it, but..." Number Man had began to write, numbers and symbols flowing from his pen.

"Which brings me to the relevant point. Can we rely on our ostensible ally?" he asked, still writing as he looked at equations on the wall that only he could see.

"He restored New York." Alexandria looked at Legend across the table. Legend said nothing. Were the people Scion had brought back the same people, or constructs under his control?

"What is Scion doing now?" Number Man ignored the byplay, absorbed by the figures.

"It is in York, Britain. Waiting under a bridge." Alexandria didn't let her frustration show. "It has ignored every attempt at contact we made." If the being was really an ally, refusing to communicate was problematic. The Entity was either parked under the bridge being stared at, or darting out infrequently to destroy the constructs which simply reformed the instant the Entity left. "At the present time, it is to all extents useless to us."

"Why isn't Scion more effective against the constructs?" Legend asked.

"It isn't adapting its tactics. They are." The table crunched under Alexandria's fingers as her frustration finally boiled over.. "We have to find a way to direct its strikes."

"A tramp named Kevin Norton claimed he could control Scion," Legend offered.

"He died," Alexandria said, coldly.

"There was another." Number Man frowned, trying to recall. "A woman named Lisette. She spoke to the police, said the same, but aside from that report she was found to be sane and was released. Here's her address." He held up a napkin partly covered in figures, his equation interrupted with words.

"The Kingsmen have cordoned the area off. We'll have them-" Alexandria began and Number Man paused in his writing again.

"Unless a member of the Triumvirate collects her, she will be dead before she arrives in York."

"I'll go." Alexandria stood, and Legend stood at the same instant.

"I'm faster," he said, but she shook her head.

"I can carry people. And Eidolon's needed against the constructs."

"Anything I can do?"

"Yes. Next time Scion goes out and annihilates the constructs, get onsite and see if you can find anything that keeps them down."

#

The young woman who opened her door to the urgent knock seemed shocked, but steadied herself quickly. No one handled their first encounter with Alexandria in person with such resigned calm. Alexandria's Thinker power indicated that the reaction showed the Triumvirate member was not the most powerful cape this woman had ever met.

"Lisette? We need you."

"To talk to Scion." The young woman seemed composed, but nervous.

"We can't fight this without him. He listens to you, correct?"

"I don't know. I've never tried." Lisette stepped back inside, picking up her coat, before she stepped outside and pulled out her keys. The bag and coat had been by the door. She'd been expecting this – no, Alexandria saw the rail tickets on the table. She had been planning to go to York already. "Do you know where he is? The news didn't say."

"Under a bridge in York." If Lisette did not know Scion was there, York must have some significance. The birthplace of Kevin Norton and where Lisette claimed she had met Scion. Alexandria didn't touch Lisette, stepping back to give her space as she locked the door. If Lisette could command Scion, or if it just protected her, that wasn't a fight that the cape could win. For once, she was outmatched.

"You know I -" Lisette stopped mid-word, slightly rattled and collected herself. "If you knew, why didn't you tell them I wasn't mad?"

"And make you a target for everyone on this earth?" Alexandria said. Lisette closed her eyes. She obviously wanted to shout, to say something, but Alexandria could see the woman asking and answering question after question inside her own head. Then she tossed her hair back and looked at the Triumvirate member, obviously putting a brave face on it.

"Shall we go then?"

#

The bridge itself was derelict and deserted, cordoned off and the buildings nearby cleared. As they approached, the area below was run down and quiet, very quiet, with all the people moved back to behind the glowing lines that the Kingsmen patrolled. The tinkertech nature of the cordon prevented sound carrying out, or in. Alexandria approved. They didn't need random factors interfering.

As they dropped out of the sky, the eyes of the crowd followed them. Alexandria scanned across quickly for weapons or other threats, but identified none. Lisette stumbled as Alexandria released her, and straightened her coat, resolutely ignoring the hundreds of people crowded beyond the cordon watching them, as camera flashes went off like a storm.

"What do you need me to do?" She was focusing on the role to avoid thinking about the implications of it. A brave young woman, but courage would only take her so far. Alexandria couldn't over-stress her.

"Lisette, this is classified. Eidolon's powers are fading. Without him at full strength, we need Scion." There was no need to threaten or intimidate the woman, she was co-operating in every way she could. Honesty would take her far further.

"Zion. His name is Zion." Alexandria didn't react to the interruption.

"If you can, make Zion restore them." Lisette nodded as Alexandria continued. "We need Zion to fight the skull ship, but he won't communicate with us. Can you make him work with us?"

"I'll try." Lisette said, Alexandria did not press or insist, because every line of the woman, every tone or inflection said she wasn't sure. And if Alexandria tried to, the golden glow under the bridge could be the last thing Alexandria saw.

Lisette walked down to the derelict bridge, Alexandria staying close and alert for threats. Hovering under it in a golden glow was the unmistakeable form of Scion. Alexandria had been this close before, during Endbringer fights, but there was something subtly different about the figure. The set of the face, the fists closed at the sides. There was no aura of sadness here, only barely constrained and overwhelming rage. Beside her Lisette flinched back, and then straightened.

"Zion, are you alright?" It was a very nervous, very genuine, question but the being did not react. Alexandria watched for any sign of communication but saw none. "Zion, Eidolon's powers are fading. Can you restore them?" There was no answer, no response from the impassive face.

"Try telling him," Alexandria said, and Lisette straightened herself.

"Scion, re-empower Eidolon's ablities." Nothing happened. "How do we tell if it worked?"

"Communications are down." Alexandria paused. "Scion keep her safe," she ordered, loud enough for the Kngsmen to hear, and took off with a sonic boom that shattered the concrete. Lisette, right next to her, was untouched. The wind didn't even rustle her hair. She stood stunned, the blank, gold, gaze focused on her intently.

An instant later Alexandria was back.

"It worked," she said tersely. Lisette gasped, swayed. Until that moment, the young woman hadn't actually believed he would listen. Nor had Alexandria. The gold gaze was focused on them both now, with an intensity that made her uncomfortable though she would never show it. They had had no time to plan the questions, no point until they could ensure stable communications, but this was one way and only one way.

#

The hosts had relocated not-host designated Lisette, replacement for the designated Kevin-Norton, into proximity with the Avatar. Unnecessary. The Warrior had a shard dedicating to monitoring the designated contact regardless of location and implemented courses of action as indicated by verbal instruction.

Direct communication is received through inefficient air vibration transmission, parsing to something relevant: status enquiry. The Entity assesses its condition, confirming no damage. The not-host cannot comprehend an actual response, rendering response unnecessary. Host Dimensional-Status[misconfigured] is located in the area. Simulation assessment indicates a protective function towards not-host Lisette. Thinker programming prior to deployment. Dimensional-Status does not respond to the Warrior's query. Shard configuration could be adjusted but the mis-configuration may be intentional for the cycle. The Thinker's original plan remains unknown. The Warrior assesses the situation, neutralising two weapons targeting the not-host Lisette, decision made to commit no energy to action against the Enemy until the non-host Lisette discloses further requirements.

#

"What else do you need?" Lisette said, pale but determined. Alexandria approved of her self-control. The Entitiy was following her orders, Eidolon was thoroughly elated by the effects, but Lisette did not seem to have any control over exactly how they were carried out. Her stance showed she was getting no feedback from Scion – Zion - just giving orders blind.

"I need him to work with us. Can you order him to listen to me?" Alexandria asked. Lisette ventured forward.

"Scion, we need you to work with Alexandria to stop the skullship." It didn't react, didn't even switch its regard to Alexandria from Lisette. Alexandria considered that a failure, but it had to be tried. Their alliance with Scion was tenuous. Giving the woman a vial to protect her risked disrupting whatever method of communication she had with it but Lisette was, when it came to it, only human. If she died, they lost their only way to communicate with the Entity. "I think you'll have to tell me and I'll relay it." Lisette wasn't stupid, which was a blessing, but having to manage the most powerful being on Earth through a relay of telephones would be prohibitive in combat. The Entity could be more useful if it could be used as a force multiplier to create capes or enhance them.

"We need Tinkers. People to build a shield to protect the planet and weapons we can use," Alexandria instructed. Lisette nodded, eyes distant for second as she thought.

"Zion, we need tinkers," she said, and then gained confidence. "The best Tinkers ever. Someone like Hero. Can you make one? I mean," - She shook her head. - "Make the best Tinker ever." Scion did not move. Its expression did not change.

And on the ground in front of them a naked man appeared, screaming, collapsing, wrapping arms protectively round his middle as he curled into a ball of pain.

#

The not-host designated Lisette is scanned at each level, and found not to be in contact with other Entities or the Enemy. Still the Warrior had not detected their presence within Kevin Norton and that member of the host species' advice had proved valuable. Not-host Kevin Norton had designated not-host Lisette as its replacement, therefore the Entity considers the advice.

The creation of a de-restricted Tinker is a logical solution to the technological nature of the Enemy. Such de-restricted shards hold a significant risk of destroying their hosts, yet many of the Thinker's have been deployed in such a state and are functioning. The instance that not-host Lisette specifies has linked to a host and functioned successfully.

The Warrior accesses the re-empowered Organisation shard to locate the Wavelength-Manipulation shard, as a stry sub-process identifies the purpose of not-host Lisette's initial command. Subsuming the dying Wavelength-Manipulation shard is simple: there is no Thinker for it to return to. Reconfiguring it to recharge, the Warrior identifies the last host pattern stored within. Recreation of Host-Wavelength-Manipulation is performed: matter is generated, reshaped to match matter patterns stored and then the patterns of thought are imprinted on the new host. The repaired shard reconnects instantly.

Non-host Lisette is not reacting as expected. Optical organs are averted. The repaired host individual is not reacting as expected. Performance is impaired, brainwave patterns will perform at the host's level, not the shards. Destruction and recreation of the created host will permit improve performance.

"Scion, that's exactly what we needed. Thank you." The task is designated complete by not-host Lisette, therefore no destruction is necessary. An undamaged host would be more efficient, but the Warrior knows there is purpose behind each request. Resolving the damage may conflict with that. Curious, the Warrior scans back over their records of arrival. It still cannot detect the Thinker's work in the Kevin Norton or Lisette not-hosts, but it is possible the Thinker had created them as emergency measures, if the Warrior's counterpart had detected the Enemy on approach.

Host Dimensional-Status[misconfigured] detaches fabric from itself and places it over the recreated Host-Wavelength-Manipulation[derestricted]. The host and not-host interact, observing the recreated host closely and the Host-Dimensional-Status performs a short intake of atmosphere prior to communicating a primitive air vibration. Translation processes identify it as a typical example of a startle indicator in the host species.

"Hero?"


End file.
